Anecdotes

The meaning and relevance of the title "The Russia House" is that it refers to the nickname given to the section of the British Secret Service that was assigned to investigating the Soviet Union.

This movie was the first major movie production from the West to be filmed substantially in the Soviet Union, with full permission from the Russian Government. This movie was filmed on location in Russia, in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The beginning and final scenes were filmed in Lisbon, Portugal.

Production company Pathé Entertainment Ltd. refused to make this movie without Sir Sean Connery.

During filming, curious Soviet citizens came to set, not to see the stars, but to watch the film crew of Russians and Westerners eat food shipped in from Britain, because of shortages and lack of variety in the Soviet capital. "All the food is catered from London, feeding up to 150 people daily," producer Paul Maslansky said. "People come from all over just to look at the food... it's kind of sad." Subsequently, Michelle Pfeiffer held up filming in Moscow, when she discovered a rule forbidding Western movie companies from feeding the Soviet extras they hire, so she stomped off and refused to come back unless they were fed. To resolve the crisis, officials from the Soviet film commission had to be called in. Begging her to return to work, they explained that this was just the way things were done. In an interview with Esquire Magazine at the time of the movie's release, Pfeiffer commented on the incident. "In a country where you can't get food, where you can't get soap, here they were watching us shovelling down these platefuls of hot, steamy spaghetti. I didn't sleep that night. It was very traumatic. Then I realized, 'You know, this is so typically American of you. This is what, as a country, we're accused of all the time'. Now, whether I was right or wrong isn't the issue. The issue was, Do I have the right, as an outsider, to come in and force my sensibilities on this culture? At a certain point, I decided to leave my identity at the border. I thought to myself, Okay, you have no identity. And at that point, I was able to experience the country as it was, on a purer level, and finally to even embrace it."

Michelle Pfeiffer turned down the role of the mistress in "Le bûcher des vanités (1990)" (which went to Melanie Griffith) to play the part of a Russian book editor in this movie. Her role in this movie as Katya Orlova earned her a Golden Globe Nomination for Best Actress (Drama), but she lost to Kathy Bates for "Misery (1990)."

Ken Russell: The British movie director as Walter, an unorthodox British Agent.